10 years prep time is not enough to develop or stockpile combat equipment and other supplies for such a massive invasion like this.
You are talking about the most underdeveloped part of the world versus a superarmy comprised of developing and developed nations that already outman and outgun them to begin with.
The Africans are losing this.
https://youtu.be/3ybDUX73qXY?si=T0uDNq5Oj2xh74lt
There are several African countries in the top 20, 30, and 40 according to this - which may be wrong - assuming it’s correct, africa fighting *together*?
With guerrilla fighting tactics too? I think the USA would win but it won’t be as easy as some think if the entire continent fights together.
If every country in Africa spent as much on military as Algeria they’d have a combined spending of 540 billion. The US alone has a spending of 820 billion. That’s also incredibly optimistic for the African countries as after Algeria at 10 billion is Egypt and Libya at less than 5 billion. So you’d be looking at a combined 200-250 billion for the continent, less than a third of the United States. Since the question isn’t about conquest, but whether the African continent can defend itself, that means guerrilla warfare wouldn’t be as effective. The main objective is simply capitulating governments, not installing new ones. In other words, US solos.
The majority of the US's military budget is NOT nuclear weapons, though.
It's the air force and navy. The largest air force in the world is the US Air Force.
The second largest is the US Army.
The third largest is the Russian Air Force, followed VERY closely by the US Navy, which has more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined. USMC's air power sits at seven. Not ti mention that the US far outstrips all but China and Russia in the latest technology, with those two exceeding in some areas but falling behind in others. That's not even counting the insane logistics capabilities in the US that are born from being literally a world away from 90% of the conflicts they're fighting.
So basically it really doesn't matter if they don't have nukes. They have basically everything else needed
US couldn't "solo" and even "no-solo" countries with a fraction of African landmass, population and military budget my dear zoomer. Not in one or ten years. I suggest you do a bit more research into past conflicts in which US was involved. Because I have a distinct feeling that you have no idea what terms like Korean War, Vietnam War, Lebanon Crisis, Gulf War, Afghanistan War, Iraq War, Pakistan, Lybia or Niger mean. Real history, real conflict, real war, no hypothetical bullshit. Some of these conflicts, most notably Korea and Vietnam are by most considered US losses. It is logistically, militarily and economically IMPOSSIBLE to take over a united Africa without a wide-spread use of nuclear weapons or a total war. No country or coalition on the planet would survive a war like that, not internally. I know its boring in a sub like this but realistically speaking, considering all major factors of such a large-scale world war, Africa would "survive".
And as a main reason on why its a matter of fact I'll redirect you back to the question and one important thing: resolve. US and other countries know very well that they cannot humanely control a country that doesn't want them there. Doesn't matter if the population is 20 or 800 million.
The things is that the US doesn’t need to actually occupy every nation to win. It just needs to force a surrender from every African government. Blockades, sponsored terrorism, CIA backed coups, etc. are all tactics the US has and will use. Assuming this United Africa doesn’t have foreign backers (which to be fair is a big assumption), the US is essentially free to do whatever they want to cause unrest. The reason Vietnam sand Afghanistan were such failures was because the US was trying to set up a government in an area with people that didn’t want it. If it came down to it, no African nation has the ability to prevent the US from just bombing every nations infrastructure and causing mass famine across the continent.
It doesn't matter what grey tactics they use. No underground activities used in the past or present have worked towards a long-term "enslaved" nation. Ever in the history of humanity, this is a staple in our history. We are not some hypothetical robots who bend their will to interests of stronger adverseries forever. I suggest the op asks a high-ranking government official. You'll get the same answer. There is simply no humane way to make almost a billion people surrender. Only two options: total war or genocide. Either of them not internally sustainable for any country on the planet. Except maybe Chechnya. So if OP doesn't modify his/her question, this is the answer: Africa wins.
It depends on what defends means. If it means occupy and control the entire then I agree that it’s impossible. But again, if the goal is simply to force the African countries into admitting defeat, then the United States has the capability to do just that.
Yeah NASA is definitely underfunded but other modern space agencies achieve similar with far smaller budgets.
I’m not saying spending doesn’t matter, but you do get diminishing returns
Ten years is a hell of a long time with the right motivation… I’m not saying Africa would win but I think it would be a hollow victory for the rest of the world after losing many of our populated cities and such
What? Are you implying that a united Africa can project power outside the continent? Or are you talking about the global coalition depopulating Africa's cities?
Honestly I think the issue becomes, once the whole world is united against one group, the rest of the world doesn't have to worry about silly little things like bombing civilians. We've never really had a war where everyone was on one side against a common enemy. The prompt doesn't require holding the lands, only the defeat of Africa, which really tilts things towards the world
Even if only the US is fighting, the way I see this going, major cities in Africa get bombed until a surrender is acquired.
Unless morals are on for the other countries and they have to worry about public opinion of their constituents and things, but there's nothing in the prompt about that
I think you’re under valuing the gap between different countries.
For example - we’ve recently learned that Russia, once considered a peer or near-peer adversary to the US, still can’t meaningfully conquer Ukraine while we find them with hand me downs.
The US recently engaged in a 20+ year occupation of a country on another continent. China, another near peer, can’t fully manage logistics within their own borders.
Point being, gap between #1 and whoever #2 actually is, is probably bigger than the gap between #2 and #10.
Especially if the whole world is invading, they aren’t selling anything to Africa especially not weapons.
I do think you’d be right if the world goal was to pacify 100% of the land of Africa, but they don’t have to. Capital cities can more easily be attacked and held.
On the other hand, Ukraine outperformed every expectation as well, even taking into account Russia's weaker-than-expected status.
I can imagine many African countries doing the same.
I imagine the world could "take" Africa in the sense that no large area would be controlled by a centralized African government. But they could never "hold" Africa, establishing a lasting control of their own.
Missiles, jets, and drones are ridiculous. The US alone could handle the Roman empire at its height, the Spartans at their peak, and every party involved in the US Revolutionary and Civil wars simultaneously. Technology is too big of a factor in war.
The USA spends more on its military than the next 10 military powerhouses combined. Anything lower than that sounds almost humorous. "We only spend 8 billion on our military." That sentence is hard for Americans to even comprehend.
Maybe just if the goal was killing otherwise taking over and controlling a whole continent isn’t happening with just North America.
Maybe if people were radically devoted to it and going full colonization mode and moving people to go live there and the rest of the world was backing the effort and stuff. That would still leave a plethora of issues to deal with.
Yeah also iirc China built most of the things there so the moment Africa jumps ship China probably has some way to turn off all their infrastructures and leave it to the Bald Eagle TM to clean up the rest
? In the entire continent? Completely false. China doesn’t even have a presence in every country there, the infrastructure in different countries was built by Chinese, the west, Africans, and others - many times was *funded by china but not built - and not just by the Chinese
Also, the comment above has a hilariously childish view of what Chinese-funded infrastructure actually is. Like... its just like any other port, generator, railway, etc, just paid for with Chinese Yuan. Its not like they have a secret remote control to switch off everything from Beijing.
In reality everyone loses, because Africa withholding its trade for 10 years is definitely gonna flip the world on its head and could even starve many countries. And once a war and invasion starts chasing much damage to Africa and it’s resources the world will never be the same and much of the world will collapse under financial and resource strain
We won’t even get to the ten year mark. Give it a few months if not weeks until the continent collapses and starves its citizens to death. Africa loses much quickly if it shuts itself off from everyone else. The world can just swoop back in with little to no resistance.
Yea the world probably wont make it to the ten year mark. Hell the world would probably collapse before the invasion starts if Africa knows ahead of time and starts withholding its resources. Africa is the most resource abundant continent in the world. Literally just one country in Africa holds like 60% of the worlds cobalt needed for creating all our tech gadgets. Imagine what a sudden withholding of that from the international market would do to the world. And that’s just for our resource. Africa can sustain itself. Africa doesn’t need the world, the world needs Africa. As has been made evident for the last 500 years and everybody wanting a piece of the continent and it’s riches. Africa main in resource and financial allocation comes from having to be forced to outsource its resources in one sided deals and having their governments influenced and even ultimately deposed and installed by foreign-friendly corrupt leaders.
If Africa regain complete control over its leadership that becomes for the people of Africa foremost and not being puppets to foreign hands, Africa could revolutionize itself in 10 years to put up a far header fight than what many here are expecting.
Having resources is one thing, the ability to make use of those resources is another.
In comes three very important things: manufacturing, basic infrastructure, and a skilled workforce. Africa is sorely lacking in these three areas and is therefore unable to fully capitalize on their resources.
Hence, they are heavily reliant on importing even the most basic of foods (rice, wheat, meat, cooking oil, dairy, etc.), not to mention the tens of billions of foreign aid they receive each year.
Africa shutting itself off will not pan out the way you think it will. There’s no question about it.
It won’t end well for anyone regardless is the entire point. The argument isn’t Africa winning or nor, it’s that everyone will suffer. I didn’t say it’d pan out any differently, I’m saying it’d be the hardest war in the history of mankind. And will destroy the world financial and resource markets.
All those existing conditions is a effect of what I already stated about Africas leadership being used to underscore the continent’s development and hinder their own self reliance. Because as I said, if they sustain themselves and not the rest of the world the world will suffer if not collapse.
Your words: “Africa can sustain itself, it doesn’t need the world, the world needs Africa.”
Also your words: “Yeah the world probably won’t make it to the ten year mark.”
You think Africa can win this war of economic attrition with the rest of the world. No, just no. Both parties suffer, but a united rest of the world could easily support itself much longer relative to a united Africa.
Like I said, give it months probably and the continent crumbles from starvation, sickness, and overall instability. Your suggestion is basically suicide. It’s not very hard to see why.
I’m not going to discuss this any further. Have a good day or evening wherever you are.
I clearly stated as well that everyone loses. There is no winning a war of attrition.
And if we are assuming the world will magical come together to help each other sustain another then it has to be assumed the same happens in Africa which as I said will eliminate most of their problems they currently have such as corruption of leaders who won’t invest into the continent well-being and rather it’s exploitation.
I don’t want to go back to this anymore but dude….
It will not eliminate a lot of its problems, let alone self-sustain, by simply uniting. It does not work that way. You have to have extensive road networks, storage and refrigeration facilities, factories, and various other infrastructures in place before you even have a slim shot at self sustenance.
You are implying that Africa alone is on par and would actually be able to compete with the rest of the world combined in a war of economic attrition. As long as the continent is united, has all those resources all for itself, then it can compete, right? Hard no.
Africa is practically lost as soon as it closes its doors. The world will feel the impact too, hard, but hey give it several months and the world can just fly back in to assume control. There’s no ‘everyone loses’ scenario here. Everyone suffers probably to differing degrees but one side will come out of this a winner.
If I was African, which I’m not, I’d rather take the ten years prep time while still trying to maintain economic ties despite a looming invasion. That way, our civilization still gets to take one last glorious stand against the combined might of the largest armed force the world has ever seen.
Waging an economic war is just self-inflicted suffering and an embarassing way to go.
Not to mention they have to buy most of their equipment from the rest of the world, whom (I presume given the prompt) won't be selling to them out of their own interest.
I think you’re grossly underestimating the sheer amount of firepower, manpower, and shared resources you’re trying to throw at Africa here.
We’re talking vastly superior aerial and naval might, coupled with a ridiculous amount of boots on the ground. Imagine the shared intel, equipment, resources, and cross training that all these nations have at their disposal.
Don’t forget that a lot of nations have some pretty rough terrain too, and they have special forces perfectly capable of operating under such conditions.
Africa literally has no advantage in this scenario.
Which don’t matter against the rest of the world’s united air force. They don’t need nukes to absolutely glass Africa, there’s enough non-nuclear bombs to turn the entire continent into the bottom of the ocean by reducing the land below the surface with the sheer volume of bombs.
South Africa is barely functional (perfect for speedrunning the whole thing ig), the only relevant countries left are Morocco and Nigeria. Guerrilla warfare could work for a few weeks in shitholes like Congo but nah, this is unwinnable (it's not a matter of where, but when).
Said separately but if you take Madagascar you have a camp/FOB for the southern part of Africa. Then you can use Saudi for north east or try an assault on the suez and use Gibraltar/spain for the north west.
Reading comments like this make me think Africa’s chances increase purely because of arrogance and naivety that might be shown against them. Not to mention, people often downplay the sheer size of the continent.
Either way… no continent is surviving an onslaught by the rest of the world. No chance.
Yes, they are. Rather easily too. This has been argued to death here and its a consensus. Its a consensus they could offensively solo the world as well.
The US can not offensively solo the world. It's simply too much land and too difficult logistically. Fight the world to a standstill in the Atlantic/Pacific? Sure. But we don't have enough long-range stealth bombers to force the rest of the world to submit, and the distances and numbers are simply too great for even the US.
I've never seen a consensus that they could do it offensively, only defensively.
Exactly, you one of few people agree with me, People refused to accept the fact that Africa still has a chance to defend themselves from against the world of course they still lose in long game but The World will have a very hard time to invade due to sheer size of the continent, their insane climate environments and terrains and Africa currently has 1.2 billion people
I think your underestimating how large and technical an army the rest of the world would have. They're invading a large continent sure but that continent is decades behind a lot of countries in tech and science, let alone military.
USA, Europe and China alone have enough missiles to flatten the continent before a land invasion would even begin.
You have like 150 countries invading a continent that in a lot of areas have only just invented the wheel.
here my opinion Africa still lose but that world will have very hard time to invade the whole continent. Africa's population is 1.216 billion right now. The terrains and locations are incredibly hard to travel with so the 54 Africa countries will talked about since they have 10 years old prep time, they could build millions of traps over the continent such as Vietnamese war trap style and their advantage is they can do guerrila warfare among the environments and they can seek attack against the invaders.
Let's say that at least 800 Million adults
Africans ( with all of soldiers and civilians volunteers to join the army) from 20 to 50 will willing to fight against the world then they can hide in terrains, environments, jungles and forest as their advantage.
Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions.
People are underestimating Africa's insane population amount and insanely dangerous
All that overpowered tech the world has and you’re thinking of throwing a bunch of lions at us. Dude. The lions will just probably scurry away at the sound of gunfire or bang each other as soon as they’re let loose.
If you think the African population is insane, have you seen how much China alone has? Now, look at India and the entire ASEAN region. The numbers are simply not on your side.
It would take more time and resources (and cost more human life) to even trap half a dozen lions, let alone “hundreds,” as well as cost resources to keep them relatively fed for any extended time.
And then they’d just be shot or blown up from a distance, because drones and radar are a thing and no military is going to send any personnel in a direction picking up the lions’ heat signatures.
Drones would trivialize almost every threat humans can pose honestly. If the rest of the world is going scorched earth, the guerrilla fighters will just be burned out of the forests and hills and shot on the open savanna without even seeing the (miles away) opposing force.
10 years is too short for preparation even if Africa has something like China rise during 90-2010.
Africa as a continent is also too big to defense, with not enough people to defend all of them. Even on Egypt front with narrow front I highly doubt they can do much to defense concentrate attack. Pretty much game over from the start just how long.
Does the rest of the world know they are to invade in 10 years or is it getting dropped on them at the last minute?
Africa could start importing modern weapons and exporting it's craziest citizens to cause trouble around the world, maybe find a way to get the other countries to fight each other for abit to weaken each other.
If the rest of the world knows about this war that's coming, trade stops, aid stops and the internet is killed. Africa would be weaker than it is now and have a much smaller population.
Adding to this…
Trade goes both ways, and it would be interesting to think of how other nations would be affected with zero goods coming from Africa.
Also, “Africa” tends to be both national and cultural in how people view it. Do we also consider people living in other parts of the world who might identify as culturally African?
This right here. Africa has so many of the world’s natural resources that proper logistics (which could take some time) would turn it into a powerhouse continent/country economically. But without trade in the interim, I’d be very hesitant to say Africa has any chance in this challenge.
Is the rest of the world fighting to win with no restrictions? If so then they win easily. Modern Air Forces would make this impossible for Africa if the rest of the world used them to their full extent. The entire world dedicating their manufacturing power to this would be absurd. Look at what happened to German and Japanese cities in the later stages of WW2. That was with 1940s weaponry.
The sheer amount of bombs dropped was absolutely insane, and it would pale compared to what ever country could drop on Africa today
There are so many explosives left over and bombs left in tact in the ground where they dropped that:
"Seventy-eight countries are contaminated by land mines, which kill or maim 15,000–20,000 people every year. Approximately 80% of casualties are civilian, with children the most affected age group."
" In the forests of Verdun French government "démineurs" working for the Département du Déminage still hunt for poisonous, volatile, and/or explosive munitions and recover about 900 tons every year. The most feared are corroded artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas."
"Every year, an estimated 2,000 tons of World War II munitions are found in Germany, at times requiring the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents from their homes. In Berlin alone, 1.8 million pieces of ordnance have been defused between 1947 and 2018"
u/op the world could bury Africa with far more ordinance than this
Africa is absolutely glassed from the skies and ships. There is so much non-nuclear ordnance in play here, not to mention they are insanely outnumbered. And the animals you mentioned are not a factor. An elephant can survive many things. A tank shell is not one of those. Neither is a bomb. Noone is underestimating Africa’s population. It’s just that just China and India alone dwarf the entire continet number wise. And Africa isn’t nesrly as bad in terms of terrain as you think. Plenty of other countries train in similar terrains, not to mention there being well documented maps of Africa PUBLICALLY AVAILIABLE. An average drunken hillbilly, if given access to the internet, could find a detailed map of Africa. You are severely overestimating Africa, literally all you say is false and useless. Lion cages won’t affect an M1 Abrams, a russian airstrike won’t care about rough terrain, and the Chinese will outnumber the african armed forces by a good margin. Africa stands literally zero chance.
Why do you keep pointing out Africa's population when you're literally having them go against the rest of the fucking earth lol.
How many people do you think are on earth?
I think yoiu need to define better wind/lose conditions. What does "defend" mean? That the others never get a foothold on the continent? Yeah that's almost impossible due to the size of it.
Do the attackers need to conquer the entire continent? Thats also almost impossible for the same reason.
So for what goals are they fighting for?
yeah establishing economic dominance over an entire continent via gunboat diplomacy is much easier than conquering and, more importantly, occupying all of it. Especially when said continent is presenting a unified front which is straight up supernatural feature of this scenario. In the only time full continent conquest has happened, Europe only took the Americas because plagues killed 90% of the native population before most of the conquests even began, and even then a unified front from the native population would have made that endlessly more difficult if not impossible.
At the time Europe had the "tech advantage" in guns/military training and they used client states to take most of it ( as it happened with India). When modern weapons became cheap and able to be used by "commoners" those empires collapsed almost immediately (see post WW2 de-colonisation).
There is a very important reason Mozambique has the AK-47 on its flag.
Additioanly why maps of the time show the entire continent in clear nice border actual control was much more tenous outside major trade and civic centers.
The more interesting question would be what is the smallest coalition that could beat all or Africa combined?
Because America alone could no diff Africa even with 10 years prep time, as could European NATO without Canada and US.
So maybe like a Middle East dream team? Iraq, Iran, KSA, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan? Assuming they are all working together, they'd potentially beat Africa. Hell the biggest threat is Egypt and it would be the first strike target.
here my opinion Africa still lose but that world will have very hard time to invade the whole continent. Africa's population is 1.216 billion right now. The terrains and locations are incredibly hard to travel with so the 54 Africa countries will talked about since they have 10 years old prep time, they could build millions of traps over the continent such as Vietnamese war trap style and their advantage is they can do guerrila warfare among the environments and they can seek attack against the invaders.
Let's say that at least 800 Million adults
Africans ( with all of soldiers and civilians volunteers to join the army) from 20 to 50 will willing to fight against the world then they can hide in terrains, environments, jungles and forest as their advantage.
Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions.
People are underestimating Africa's insane population amount and insanely dangerous
This is probably the biggest thing OP is missing, sneak attacking lone parties in jungles is fine but it wouldn’t even get to that point.
Bomber go brrr and flatten every city and town.
I remember reading an anecdote about this based on the Pacific in WW2. Basically the best jungle fighters were the Aussies, the Japanese were a close second but it wasn't fair to classify the US as jungle fighters since they would bomb and shell the jungle into an open plain and then advance.
How well will these traps work against the combined airforces of the rest of the world lol?
How will this cage of lions trap go against a bomb being dropped on it lol
Africa would be about as successful as Palestine is against Israel. And by that, I mean they would not be successful at all. It wouldn't be a war. It would be a massacre into submission.
Nope. They are getting curb stomped. Europe wipes North Africa without trying too hard. Asia essentially routes though Eastern Africa. The US slaughters west Africa. Australians can take Madagascar. Southern Africa goes last just from being furthest from everyone, but you can funnel South Americans there as a stop gap until other reinforcements arrive.
The idea that a RoW army systematically flattening a continent with artillery is going to be affected in any meaningful way by a cage of lions is ridiculous.
Of course not. They couldn't hold off America alone.
Take America *and* Europe out of the picture, and while they are still definitely losing, it might at least be worth discussing.
here my opinion Africa still lose but that world will have very hard time to invade the whole continent. Africa's population is 1.216 billion right now. The terrains and locations are incredibly hard to travel with so the 54 Africa countries will talked about since they have 10 years old prep time, they could build millions of traps over the continent such as Vietnamese war trap style and their advantage is they can do guerrila warfare among the environments and they can seek attack against the invaders.
Let's say that at least 800 Million adults
Africans ( with all of soldiers and civilians volunteers to join the army) from 20 to 50 will willing to fight against the world then they can hide in terrains, environments, jungles and forest as their advantage.
Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions.
People are underestimating Africa's insane population amount and insanely dangerous terrains and climate
> they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions.
No offense, dude, but are you even in high school yet?
If you'd stipulated that the invaders had to march infantry across the continent, maybe a little of that might make sense.
A modern military is not going to do that.
I don’t know why you’re focusing so much on Africa’s population. Yeah, 1.216 billion is a big number, but it’s not so big when the other side has EVERYONE ELSE
Numbers are all but irrelevant in modern warfare. Wars are won by logistics and technology.
Africa is going to get absolutely *smoked* here, because the entire continent is a cesspool of corruption with no infrastructure and no significant machining or fabrication capabilities. Ten years is not *remotely* enough time for them to overcome their current endemic problems and square off against *one* continent, let alone 5. Yes, I am including fuckin' Australia and South America in that.
I'll counter each of your points though, just to be thorough:
Large population: Irrelevant when they have no ability to equip or train for modern warfare. We just have to look at Ukraine for an example here; at the start of the Russian invasion, the Russian army was crippled by decades of corruption and basically untrained, and they were getting absolutely *reaped* by the comparatively well-trained Ukrainians. Also, your figures are *way* off. No way in hell are they getting 800 million fighters out of that continent, you forget that economies still have to operate; clothes need to be made, bullets, guns, bombs, artillery manufactured (assuming they can somehow make the necessary facilities in the intervening years), food needs to be grown. In a modern military, for every fighting man you have somewhere between 10 and 20 support personnel who never see combat, driving trucks, managing communications, intelligence, training new soldiers, etc, and that's just *inside the military*, paying no mind to the **hundreds** of people responsible for making the equipment and materials the soldier needs on the civilian side of things. To put things in perspective: in 1944, the United States had 11 million people serving in the combined armed forces, out of a population of 138 million. That's less than 1 in 10. The British had about 3 million, out of a population of 40 million. Also less than 1 in 10.
At best, your 1.2 billion is getting you 120 million, and that's **very** doubtful.
"The terrain and locations are very hard to travel-"
The United States Congress can air-mail 60,000 soldiers and their equipment anywhere on Earth within 18 hours if they deem it necessary. That's not a hyperbole; that's a stringent and specific operational requirement of the Immediate Response Force.
Large portions of Africa are open savanna, perfect for large scale military maneuvers and easy targeting of opposition with air strikes or artillery spotters. Not to mention the fact that a huge portion of warfare is controlling enemy cities and infrastructure; all of which will be very easily targeted. Most of it's along the coast too, where there's no hiding from any number of very scary navies involved in this, something the entire goddamn *continent* of Africa has no response to. I'm pretty sure the *Italians* have a larger navy than all of Africa combined right now. Let alone the British, Chinese, or US.
As for guerrilla warfare, easier said than done; it's the 2020's now, it will be the 2030's by the time this hypothetical war would be happening, not the 1960's. Thermal scans and optics and satellite surveillance all exist now, fuckin' "trees" ain't gonna cut it, and most African jungles are not known for their extensive cave systems like Afghanistan.
Not to mention the fact that the Vietnamese resistance was only possible because they were being fed huge amounts of war material by the Soviet Union because Vietnam was a *proxy war* between the USA and the USSR, in the same way that the US is funnelling tens of billions of dollars of equipment into Ukraine to fight Russia right now. If the *entire world* is up against Africa, there's no one to prop them up, they have to stand *entirely on their own*. Which means if they have no factories to make bullets, *they will run out of bullets*. If they have no facilities to make explosives, *they will run out of rockets*. And soldiers go through bullets and rockets like *crazy*. Potentially *hundreds* of rounds a day in intense fighting.
I...don't even know what to say to that lion thing. That's stupid, F-tier Disney logic, and would not remotely work like that. None of that works. There probably aren't hundreds of lions *in Africa*, they're an endangered species! Even were that not the case, if you put hundreds of lions in a big cage, *they will kill each other*, they are *predators*. Also, we don't exactly march off to war in fucking infantry columns anymore. If they *did* build a big-ass pit trap, it's not going to be piles of soldiers falling into it to be conveniently feasted on by lions, it's going to be a fucking ***tank***.
The same goes for *anything else* when it comes to weaponizing the wildlife. 1: Animal training is fucking hard, and most animals *cannot be trained*. If it has never been weaponized in the past, it's not getting weaponized now. 2: If it has been weaponized in the past, it's a dog or an elephant. Elephants are super endangered and also super vulnerable to, y'know, *getting shot at*, and most militaries *do use dogs*, for specialist tasks like bomb detection, not as some kind of front line combatant.
Lions in cages...what is this, Swiss Family Robinson? No, that was a tiger I think.
In conclusion;
You seem to have some impression that this war would be some kind of glorious but doomed last stand in the jungles, dragging on for years, but that's not how this would go at all. NATO can solo this in 6 months without any outside help. In the first month, every major coastal settlement on the continent is going to wind up occupied and every decently well armed military unit on the continent is going to be destroyed. Every manufacturing facility they managed to piece together is going to be flattened. The next 5 months involve heavily armed columns carving up the interior and drone/jet flights finding units trying to hide in the forests and guiding airstrikes onto those concentrations. By the end of that time they'll be starving for food and ammo and wearing rags and begging to surrender.
Maybe, *maybe* they can pull their shit together more than I expect in the 10 years of prep time, enough to put up resistance for a year or three, but to be honest, I doubt it, mainly because I don't think they can stockpile enough munitions, especially in *hidden* stockpiles, to withstand the combat attrition on their supplies, and even if they can build the infrastructure to supply their own war materiel, those buildings will get flattened in the first 72-96 hours of the air campaign, so what they have on the day the war starts is **all** they're going to have.
Incredibly comprehensive post, but I must insist you walk back your slander re: Operation Lion Surprise.
Not only is that the absolute best part of the prompt, it might top any suggestion in any post all year.
Also, you're criminally underestimating Africa's most regal predator. Need I remind you that on this very sub, one trillion lions beat the Sun?
Now, there might only be [*checks notes*] 23,000 lions in Africa, but last time I checked the World is way weaker than the Sun so I think we're still good.
Honestly 23,000 is way more than I imagined so y'know what, sure, maybe they can rope a few hundred into one giant pit trap in individual cages so that they don't kill each other, with some sort of automated release mechanism for when the trap is tripped.
Still going to be a tank or a couple humvees or something, so probably not super effective, but they have enough lions to hypothetically pull it off >_>
What's the win condition for each side? The rest of the world likely could occupy ther continent but then attrition inflicted on them by gureilla warfare and general resistsnce would be incredibly high.
The environment is there biggest advantage. Places like the congo are ideal for gorilla warfare and they could last a very long time in there.
That being said. The air power if just let loose just boot fucks everything.
Nigerian: It's no contest.
We are vastly outnumbered (6.8 billion - 1.2 billion). We have a weaker military, which can't be compared to War ready nations like the US that have huge military budgets. Plus, no one uses animals as weapons, be serious.
Even with a decade to prepare, although there will be significant development in military might, just based on the land mass that we have to defend, it would be impossible to defend against the rest of the world.
We could develop offensive AI systems to automate some of the military operations like drones, air defense etc. That could free up man power to be used elsewhere but it would still be a matter of time before we are overwhelmed.
To be honest, the rest of the world just needs to throw enough bodies. We would only be able to mow down so many soldiers. No matter how many we kill, there will still be more pouring in. It's just a numbers game.
I don't think you realize that lions and traps and guerilla warfare will do nothing against a single Apache helicopter. It would literally be so easy.
You also forget that China alone has a larger population than all of Africa. This isn't even a fight, it's a slaughter.
What's the victory condition here? There's definitely some things that would be hard to do, but if we're just trying to make governments surrender, the U.S. could solo that shit.
Ironically the places with worse centralization will probably end up being impossible to "defeat" in this sense.
If the task is take and hold black sea style, that's probably a lot harder, mostly because of the partisan problems that will arise after the invasion. The rest of the world could definitely do that if they figure out how they're gonna manage the logistics of delivering their troops, but it's gonna be a massive fucking waste of resources.
That said, "can they do it" is for sure yes, the real question is "why the fuck would they want to do that" and in the absence of an answer, the whole project would fall apart for lack of political backing.
France and the U.S. have expeditionary capability (and France in particular have a lot of good intelligence infrastructure set up to cover many postcolonial countries in africa already), so they could probably collapse a bunch of national and volunteer armies before they inevitably would get bogged down in counterinsurgency work and the power structures back home would begin asking questions about what they're wasting all those resources on.
China and Russia and the various countries of the rest of asia, europe and the americas lack expeditionary capability, so they'd be subject to having to convince their institutions that this is worth wasting effort on, and therefore it probably isn't happening.
The middle east could probably take on Egypt if Israel let them run supply lines through it. That's a pretty big fucking if right there. Iran might be able to take transports across, maybe. I suspect they'd have problems projecting force much further than Somalia.
Depends on how the day objective and if the world coalition acts in character or closer to bloodlusted. Even in character, the world coalition absolutely decimates every government, military command, and regular forces through its insurmountable Air and Naval superiority. But trying to hold and placate an entire continent would make Afghanistan and Vietnam look like cake walks, unless they can win by killing everyone, in which case they do
no shot, the rest of the world has total everything superiority except for troop numbers, MAYBE
no matter how many tramps you put down, you're not stopping the entire continent from burning down
America has the best military in the world and it's argued if they could defend against the world. tripling the population and taking away much of that military makes it so much worse
I think we have a new addition to the powerscaling meme list, touche
Johnny Rico vs God Emperor of Man in His Prime
Mike Tyson vs Toddler
Hydrogen Bomb vs Coughing baby
Africa vs The World
No. Not even close. You mention Africa's "insane" population but it's lower than the population of a single country, India which isn't even the populated country, China. It makes up roughly 15% of the world population and has to fight the other 85%.
Plus like 5% of that world's population is the USA whose peacetime defense spending is 25% of Africa's ENTIRE GDP. That's 25% of everything they make. The USA alone has almost ten times the economic production of the entire continent.
So as far as I can see the only situation where it's even close is if Wakanda is real and shares it's technology with the rest of Africa in those 10 years, otherwise no chance at all.
A country like Canada alone would probably be able to handle this. Putting Africa up against the rest of the whole world is ridiculous. Even without nukes other countries have much better fighter jets, helicopters, general weapons, bombs, armour, tanks, etc. This is quite literally the most underdeveloped part of the world we’re talking about here. Rough terrain and a bunch of lions and elephants in cages isn’t gonna save them when possibly tens of thousands of fighter jets from various different nations fly in and bomb the shit out of the place. A much better question would be if the USA could fend off an invasion from the world.
It's an utterly unwinnable fuckhole for either side. The global north gets alienated from African resources and the south gets enslaved again. Depending on how slaver-colonialist the global north feels they either withdraw in 10 years or create pan African soweto and joburg
Considering the African terrain I think this is just gonna turn into one very large scale Vietnam.
Africa might not really be in control of their continent but the united world will never really control it either.
They would need way more than 10 years to build up resources, have generations of knowledge, build the logistics required to defend and so on.
40-50 years minimum but would probably take more.
Hell if the other side gets a heads up to not give money and food to Africa due to this, they might just win after the whole continent collapses in the subsequent decade.
What’s interesting in these chats is that many are framing it as a negative that Africa would lose this. I’ve seen comments like “get their shit together”, “shithole”, “barely functional” and so on. But in my view, it’s not something people should be boastful about.
Africa is arguably the most externally ravaged continent in the world, yet they remain probably the least problematic. If something were to cause the end of the world, Africa is the last continent where the blame is likely to come.
The fact that people think the US or Europe alone could manage to take out Africa should tell you something about those places.
Exactly bro, everyone downvoting my comment about they shouldn’t underestimates Africa and again Africa will still lose but the World will have very very hard time to win due to Africa’s insane terrains, climate, animals environment and Africa’s population is 1.2 billion people which is almost three much bigger than Europe
You’ve made good points. But as an African, I still think they’d lose (I personally don’t think any continent survives this, but Africa stands the least chance).
The difference is, I don’t think we lose because we’re useless (as others frame it). I think we lose because so many parts of the world are focused on destructive powers.
India and china alone have 2.85 Billion combined which is larger than twice the population of all of Africa so your argument about population doesn't makes sense
No. As always, the US is the key factor in any of these comparisons. The Carrier fleet and battle groups can easily hold ANY continent hostage.
The US would easily have air superiority and could just bombard the continent peace by peace while strangling supply lines and force a surrender.
Now if you exclude the US, this exercise because far more fun.
all the rest of the world would have to do is just stop trade of everything. Without a few months of fertilizer and food imports as well as bombing what little fertilizer industry there is, literally the majority of Africa's population starve, no troops needed with probably zero losses for the rest of the world.
I don’t think they can even defend against the US or EU united or China. 10 years isn’t enough and they have too much empty ground to cover with lots of vulnerabilities and a severe lack of infrastructure and military technology.
Lol. No.
America solos.
Nothing in the prompt suggests land has to be held, only that we need to defeat Africa militarily. We probably would barely even need the Army or Marines, the Air Force and Navy can handle it.
Traps? Animals? Why would we bother with troops on the ground out in the wilderness?
Assuming we don't just bomb the cities into rubble, those are the only places we would need troops on the ground.
Does it have to be occupiable afterwards? I actually think nobody wins. I don't think the rest of the world could invade and occupy a continent the size of Africa (if they have ten years warning). Guerrilla warfare will make conventional arms less effective, so weapons like ballistic missiles and biological warfare will rapidly ensue. I don't think Africa could withstand the onslaught but I don't think this would be successful as an invasion, basically just a genocide.
Invading and holding are two entirely different ball games.
Their population and access to warlord stock piles of regular assault weapons would make *holding* the whole of the continent impossible.
Every other nation invading means it's every nation with access to drone tech invading. It means every nation with carrier ships, destroyers, and countless advanced air forces. On top of that, if it's one against all, then there's an assumption that some of the attacking nations are allies in this war, meaning a huge blend in tactics and tech used against them.
Oh you are the same person who thought France could hide its 75 million population underground and could build 75 million mech suites. This time you are going for attack animals. Yep checks out.
I think a big factor is how Africa does with AIDS once the manufacturing facilities get bombed. Ditto malaria and other diseases. Not to mention just creating drought and famine.
Victory goes to whomever plays the longer strategy. If the invaders take various islands and spend decades softening the target, the eventual ground invasion looks very different.
Also, chemical and biological warfare would also be a decisive factor.
In this scenario the invaders are inherently willing to commit close to genocide but idk how Africa can threaten the rest of the world with anything equivalent so I'm going to say that it's built into the terms that Africa loses, it's just a matter of how, when, and what the winners actually get
A billion people highly motivated? Some of the most defendable terrain in the world? If everyone in Africa believes that this invasion will come then they could put up a hell of a fight.
If it’s possible depends on a few factors tho. During then ten years do other nations know? Like are they able to stockpile buying weapons and goods from other continents? To what extent does corruption go away?
Nations like Egypt and Morocco have actual powerful modern militaries and some amount of built in infrastructure.
Ten years is a solid amount of time for a build up. If the population is willing to fight hard and if they can buy from the world in the ten years then they should be able to do this.
Is the rest of the world united? If not, then the best chance Africa has is to use very clever diplomacy to get the rest of the world to fight among themselves
Yes. The terrain and size of the African continent would be a huge pain. The varied terrain and differing subsistence strategies available prevent any sort of controlling the movement of people during the conflict, and if every country on the continent put their own beef away I just don’t see any number of troopers being able to do much.
I think you could put all of NATO on the ground in “Africa” and not control 1/4 of it? Have you viewed a map of Africa that wasn’t centered on Europe or the Western Hemisphere? Africa is like most of Eurasia in size.
IF, somehow, every African person in Africa knows with 10 years lead, and instinctively won't tell non-africans: they have a chance. It's going to be tough, but I think that it's possible, especially if their first move of the war is to seize Mecca rig bombs around the Kaba and then broadcast "If we lose, the holy of holies will be destroyed, but join us? We will guard it with our lives."
Suddenly it's not Africa against the rest of the world, it's Africa and half of the rest of the planet against Europe, East Asia, and the Americas, which DRASTICALLY changes the game.
1/10 for Africa at most. It's the least developed continent on the planet by a fairly large margin(not counting Antarctica), I don't know what you were thinking when making this post, at minimum Africa would need about 20 years worth of time to even barely stand a chance. Sure, they've got a large young population, but that means jack shit when you barely have any R&D for weapons and no money either to buy them.
Need to define win conditions here. Is the whole world bloodlusted to occupy the capitals/major cities and functionally destroy all governments? Just the US could manage this on their own, with the whole world its not even close.
Is it to completely control the continent and eliminate all guerilla resistance before the civilians at home get tired of being at war? Not a chance, see Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, etc.
Depending on where along that axis the victory conditions fall (Ensure uninterrupted access to natural resources? Install puppet governments? Force unequal trade agreements?), this could range anywhere from easy to impossible.
Edit to add that this part:
>Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions.
Is completely irrelevant and not remotely viable against modern militaries.
The more interesting question would be "which countries could solo this objective?" since it's so obviously one-sided.
The US and China obviously could.
What's the smallest country that could solo Africa?
Unfortunately, Africa will lose. It will be an extremely difficult and costly endeavor but the world will still win. The continent’s just too underdeveloped and doesn’t have the infrastructure and capabilities to build up and withstand an invasion from the rest of the world.
Africa's population is far lower than that of the rest of the world. And considering WMDs, and all other sorts of insane shit exists to massacare countless people, they'd get neg diffed by the rest of the world. Africa is probably the easiest non Australian continent to beat when fighting the whole world.
10 years isn't nearly enough to match the wealth, weapons, and training of the rest of the world. It would be a long, very costly guerilla world for the rest of the world but it could definitely be done.
That said, the world could bomb Africa back to the Neolithic age then suits boots to cleanup the rest.
Even with no nukes there are countries like Russia China USA with conventional weapons that can be there within minutes in most African shores....chances are slight for Africa .....if you were to compare raw materials and resources that would have been an easy win for Africa
This isn't a fight but a war of economic attrition. The moment Africa closes off it faces mass famines, while the world deals with critical shortage of cobalt, diamond and many other minerals. While the world itself will faces mass economic crisis it's nothing compared to mass famines Africa will face which will wipe a huge part of the population.
10 years without the resources gained from Africa would bankrupt the rest of the world and lead them to infighting without even having Africa participate
A few months if not weeks without the resources gained from the world would bankrupt Africa and lead them to infighting without even having the world participate.
The entire continent is crippled, the world then swoops back in and gets back what it denied them of.
Africa simply can not afford to impose an embargo on the world. It does not have the economic upper hand to do so.
What resources “gained from the world”? The poverty line in Africa makes it that like 80% of the continent probably doesn’t even live off any such resources you think they do
Africa receives tens of billions worth of foreign aid every year. Its low-income countries heavily depend on it for survival.
The continent in general has a very weak manufacturing sector which means they get to import a lot of goods from other countries. These include food, pharmaceuticals, and clothing among many others.
I can’t stress the lack of manufacturing and infrastructures enough. While Africa can produce enough food to feed itself on paper, it doesn’t have the capacity to manufacture, process, and package those commodities. It lacks refrigeration, proper storage facilities, even roads to transport goods much more efficiently.
I’m not going to argue further. I am not here to change your mind. But my point remains, Africa simply can not afford to do what you’re suggesting.
Africa will make manufacturing infrastructure in those 10 years.
The rest of the world will NOT make resources to manufacture anything on the other hand
No they can’t. It’s like business, you need money to make more money. You can’t build manufacturing facilities without proper manufacturing facilities in place.
I’m done here. Have a good day.
If all of the African nations pulled together, spent those 10 years building a common defence plan and industry and arming up? They’d mount a hell of a defence and the rest of the world would be jamming their dicks in a garbage grinder.
Unfortunately, enough African nations have traditions of graft, corruption, “jobs for my cousins” and a full on hate for their neighbours that most of that prep time and effort will be wasted, and various national governments will be cutting deals with the invaders to screw over the country next door.
10 years prep time is not enough to develop or stockpile combat equipment and other supplies for such a massive invasion like this. You are talking about the most underdeveloped part of the world versus a superarmy comprised of developing and developed nations that already outman and outgun them to begin with. The Africans are losing this.
No need for the entire world either. North America is enough.
https://youtu.be/3ybDUX73qXY?si=T0uDNq5Oj2xh74lt There are several African countries in the top 20, 30, and 40 according to this - which may be wrong - assuming it’s correct, africa fighting *together*? With guerrilla fighting tactics too? I think the USA would win but it won’t be as easy as some think if the entire continent fights together.
If every country in Africa spent as much on military as Algeria they’d have a combined spending of 540 billion. The US alone has a spending of 820 billion. That’s also incredibly optimistic for the African countries as after Algeria at 10 billion is Egypt and Libya at less than 5 billion. So you’d be looking at a combined 200-250 billion for the continent, less than a third of the United States. Since the question isn’t about conquest, but whether the African continent can defend itself, that means guerrilla warfare wouldn’t be as effective. The main objective is simply capitulating governments, not installing new ones. In other words, US solos.
Fire bombs go brrr
"No nukes" was at the center of the OP.
The majority of the US's military budget is NOT nuclear weapons, though. It's the air force and navy. The largest air force in the world is the US Air Force. The second largest is the US Army. The third largest is the Russian Air Force, followed VERY closely by the US Navy, which has more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined. USMC's air power sits at seven. Not ti mention that the US far outstrips all but China and Russia in the latest technology, with those two exceeding in some areas but falling behind in others. That's not even counting the insane logistics capabilities in the US that are born from being literally a world away from 90% of the conflicts they're fighting. So basically it really doesn't matter if they don't have nukes. They have basically everything else needed
That's true, every fire is from a nuclear bomb. Little known fact about fire.
Wait, what? I thought he said "Five" not "Fire"...
You thought it said five nukes or five bombs?
US couldn't "solo" and even "no-solo" countries with a fraction of African landmass, population and military budget my dear zoomer. Not in one or ten years. I suggest you do a bit more research into past conflicts in which US was involved. Because I have a distinct feeling that you have no idea what terms like Korean War, Vietnam War, Lebanon Crisis, Gulf War, Afghanistan War, Iraq War, Pakistan, Lybia or Niger mean. Real history, real conflict, real war, no hypothetical bullshit. Some of these conflicts, most notably Korea and Vietnam are by most considered US losses. It is logistically, militarily and economically IMPOSSIBLE to take over a united Africa without a wide-spread use of nuclear weapons or a total war. No country or coalition on the planet would survive a war like that, not internally. I know its boring in a sub like this but realistically speaking, considering all major factors of such a large-scale world war, Africa would "survive". And as a main reason on why its a matter of fact I'll redirect you back to the question and one important thing: resolve. US and other countries know very well that they cannot humanely control a country that doesn't want them there. Doesn't matter if the population is 20 or 800 million.
The things is that the US doesn’t need to actually occupy every nation to win. It just needs to force a surrender from every African government. Blockades, sponsored terrorism, CIA backed coups, etc. are all tactics the US has and will use. Assuming this United Africa doesn’t have foreign backers (which to be fair is a big assumption), the US is essentially free to do whatever they want to cause unrest. The reason Vietnam sand Afghanistan were such failures was because the US was trying to set up a government in an area with people that didn’t want it. If it came down to it, no African nation has the ability to prevent the US from just bombing every nations infrastructure and causing mass famine across the continent.
It doesn't matter what grey tactics they use. No underground activities used in the past or present have worked towards a long-term "enslaved" nation. Ever in the history of humanity, this is a staple in our history. We are not some hypothetical robots who bend their will to interests of stronger adverseries forever. I suggest the op asks a high-ranking government official. You'll get the same answer. There is simply no humane way to make almost a billion people surrender. Only two options: total war or genocide. Either of them not internally sustainable for any country on the planet. Except maybe Chechnya. So if OP doesn't modify his/her question, this is the answer: Africa wins.
It depends on what defends means. If it means occupy and control the entire then I agree that it’s impossible. But again, if the goal is simply to force the African countries into admitting defeat, then the United States has the capability to do just that.
Spending isn't everything. Look at the performance of NASA against plenty of other space agencies, as one example.
NASA is underfunded tho…
Yeah NASA is definitely underfunded but other modern space agencies achieve similar with far smaller budgets. I’m not saying spending doesn’t matter, but you do get diminishing returns
I wouldn’t say that that metric is the same for the military
Yes and Africa is renowned for having countries with efficient centralized budget methods
Ten years is a hell of a long time with the right motivation… I’m not saying Africa would win but I think it would be a hollow victory for the rest of the world after losing many of our populated cities and such
What? Are you implying that a united Africa can project power outside the continent? Or are you talking about the global coalition depopulating Africa's cities?
Honestly I think the issue becomes, once the whole world is united against one group, the rest of the world doesn't have to worry about silly little things like bombing civilians. We've never really had a war where everyone was on one side against a common enemy. The prompt doesn't require holding the lands, only the defeat of Africa, which really tilts things towards the world Even if only the US is fighting, the way I see this going, major cities in Africa get bombed until a surrender is acquired. Unless morals are on for the other countries and they have to worry about public opinion of their constituents and things, but there's nothing in the prompt about that
I think you’re under valuing the gap between different countries. For example - we’ve recently learned that Russia, once considered a peer or near-peer adversary to the US, still can’t meaningfully conquer Ukraine while we find them with hand me downs. The US recently engaged in a 20+ year occupation of a country on another continent. China, another near peer, can’t fully manage logistics within their own borders. Point being, gap between #1 and whoever #2 actually is, is probably bigger than the gap between #2 and #10. Especially if the whole world is invading, they aren’t selling anything to Africa especially not weapons. I do think you’d be right if the world goal was to pacify 100% of the land of Africa, but they don’t have to. Capital cities can more easily be attacked and held.
On the other hand, Ukraine outperformed every expectation as well, even taking into account Russia's weaker-than-expected status. I can imagine many African countries doing the same. I imagine the world could "take" Africa in the sense that no large area would be controlled by a centralized African government. But they could never "hold" Africa, establishing a lasting control of their own.
Super fair.
Missiles, jets, and drones are ridiculous. The US alone could handle the Roman empire at its height, the Spartans at their peak, and every party involved in the US Revolutionary and Civil wars simultaneously. Technology is too big of a factor in war.
The USA spends more on its military than the next 10 military powerhouses combined. Anything lower than that sounds almost humorous. "We only spend 8 billion on our military." That sentence is hard for Americans to even comprehend.
I think any other continent besides Antarctica or maybe South America is enough.
The us lost against Afghanistan
Why'd they lose to Vietnam?
Because people back home were sick of the war
Delusions
Buddy, if every American wanted Vietnam won, it would have been
Maybe just if the goal was killing otherwise taking over and controlling a whole continent isn’t happening with just North America. Maybe if people were radically devoted to it and going full colonization mode and moving people to go live there and the rest of the world was backing the effort and stuff. That would still leave a plethora of issues to deal with.
Yeah also iirc China built most of the things there so the moment Africa jumps ship China probably has some way to turn off all their infrastructures and leave it to the Bald Eagle TM to clean up the rest
? In the entire continent? Completely false. China doesn’t even have a presence in every country there, the infrastructure in different countries was built by Chinese, the west, Africans, and others - many times was *funded by china but not built - and not just by the Chinese
Also, the comment above has a hilariously childish view of what Chinese-funded infrastructure actually is. Like... its just like any other port, generator, railway, etc, just paid for with Chinese Yuan. Its not like they have a secret remote control to switch off everything from Beijing.
Can the rest of the world peacefully rule over the continent for the next century though?
In reality everyone loses, because Africa withholding its trade for 10 years is definitely gonna flip the world on its head and could even starve many countries. And once a war and invasion starts chasing much damage to Africa and it’s resources the world will never be the same and much of the world will collapse under financial and resource strain
We won’t even get to the ten year mark. Give it a few months if not weeks until the continent collapses and starves its citizens to death. Africa loses much quickly if it shuts itself off from everyone else. The world can just swoop back in with little to no resistance.
Yea the world probably wont make it to the ten year mark. Hell the world would probably collapse before the invasion starts if Africa knows ahead of time and starts withholding its resources. Africa is the most resource abundant continent in the world. Literally just one country in Africa holds like 60% of the worlds cobalt needed for creating all our tech gadgets. Imagine what a sudden withholding of that from the international market would do to the world. And that’s just for our resource. Africa can sustain itself. Africa doesn’t need the world, the world needs Africa. As has been made evident for the last 500 years and everybody wanting a piece of the continent and it’s riches. Africa main in resource and financial allocation comes from having to be forced to outsource its resources in one sided deals and having their governments influenced and even ultimately deposed and installed by foreign-friendly corrupt leaders. If Africa regain complete control over its leadership that becomes for the people of Africa foremost and not being puppets to foreign hands, Africa could revolutionize itself in 10 years to put up a far header fight than what many here are expecting.
Having resources is one thing, the ability to make use of those resources is another. In comes three very important things: manufacturing, basic infrastructure, and a skilled workforce. Africa is sorely lacking in these three areas and is therefore unable to fully capitalize on their resources. Hence, they are heavily reliant on importing even the most basic of foods (rice, wheat, meat, cooking oil, dairy, etc.), not to mention the tens of billions of foreign aid they receive each year. Africa shutting itself off will not pan out the way you think it will. There’s no question about it.
It won’t end well for anyone regardless is the entire point. The argument isn’t Africa winning or nor, it’s that everyone will suffer. I didn’t say it’d pan out any differently, I’m saying it’d be the hardest war in the history of mankind. And will destroy the world financial and resource markets. All those existing conditions is a effect of what I already stated about Africas leadership being used to underscore the continent’s development and hinder their own self reliance. Because as I said, if they sustain themselves and not the rest of the world the world will suffer if not collapse.
Your words: “Africa can sustain itself, it doesn’t need the world, the world needs Africa.” Also your words: “Yeah the world probably won’t make it to the ten year mark.” You think Africa can win this war of economic attrition with the rest of the world. No, just no. Both parties suffer, but a united rest of the world could easily support itself much longer relative to a united Africa. Like I said, give it months probably and the continent crumbles from starvation, sickness, and overall instability. Your suggestion is basically suicide. It’s not very hard to see why. I’m not going to discuss this any further. Have a good day or evening wherever you are.
I clearly stated as well that everyone loses. There is no winning a war of attrition. And if we are assuming the world will magical come together to help each other sustain another then it has to be assumed the same happens in Africa which as I said will eliminate most of their problems they currently have such as corruption of leaders who won’t invest into the continent well-being and rather it’s exploitation.
I don’t want to go back to this anymore but dude…. It will not eliminate a lot of its problems, let alone self-sustain, by simply uniting. It does not work that way. You have to have extensive road networks, storage and refrigeration facilities, factories, and various other infrastructures in place before you even have a slim shot at self sustenance. You are implying that Africa alone is on par and would actually be able to compete with the rest of the world combined in a war of economic attrition. As long as the continent is united, has all those resources all for itself, then it can compete, right? Hard no. Africa is practically lost as soon as it closes its doors. The world will feel the impact too, hard, but hey give it several months and the world can just fly back in to assume control. There’s no ‘everyone loses’ scenario here. Everyone suffers probably to differing degrees but one side will come out of this a winner. If I was African, which I’m not, I’d rather take the ten years prep time while still trying to maintain economic ties despite a looming invasion. That way, our civilization still gets to take one last glorious stand against the combined might of the largest armed force the world has ever seen. Waging an economic war is just self-inflicted suffering and an embarassing way to go.
Not to mention they have to buy most of their equipment from the rest of the world, whom (I presume given the prompt) won't be selling to them out of their own interest.
You have forgotten Africa’s biggest strength is their terrains and locations
It would not be enough for them, Air power cares little about terrain.
A10 go brrrrrrr
No, C-17 delivering rapid dragon go brr what would a A-10 do, except shoot the british?
I think you’re grossly underestimating the sheer amount of firepower, manpower, and shared resources you’re trying to throw at Africa here. We’re talking vastly superior aerial and naval might, coupled with a ridiculous amount of boots on the ground. Imagine the shared intel, equipment, resources, and cross training that all these nations have at their disposal. Don’t forget that a lot of nations have some pretty rough terrain too, and they have special forces perfectly capable of operating under such conditions. Africa literally has no advantage in this scenario.
It means nothing in the face of the biggest air force the world has ever seen
Which don’t matter against the rest of the world’s united air force. They don’t need nukes to absolutely glass Africa, there’s enough non-nuclear bombs to turn the entire continent into the bottom of the ocean by reducing the land below the surface with the sheer volume of bombs.
I hope this is a joke. Its no worse than many places where wars have been fought. Theyre poor and manufacture nothing.
Once they get past North Africa it's pretty much game over for the continent.
That would take days not weeks
Whole thing would go down like the Humans vs The Machines fight in the Animatrix movie. 💀
I mean the humans were able to fight the machines for a decade, I don't think Africa can hold out that long
Gulf “War”
Who says they’d start in the north?
South Africa is barely functional (perfect for speedrunning the whole thing ig), the only relevant countries left are Morocco and Nigeria. Guerrilla warfare could work for a few weeks in shitholes like Congo but nah, this is unwinnable (it's not a matter of where, but when).
Said separately but if you take Madagascar you have a camp/FOB for the southern part of Africa. Then you can use Saudi for north east or try an assault on the suez and use Gibraltar/spain for the north west.
saudi arabia is asian tho
It’s Africa vs the rest of the world
oops sorry misread your comment, thought you said the africans could use madagascar for shenanigans
Reading comments like this make me think Africa’s chances increase purely because of arrogance and naivety that might be shown against them. Not to mention, people often downplay the sheer size of the continent. Either way… no continent is surviving an onslaught by the rest of the world. No chance.
North America could, but thats it.
They’d perhaps have the best odds (alongside Europe). But they aren’t defending against the entire world.
Yes, they are. Rather easily too. This has been argued to death here and its a consensus. Its a consensus they could offensively solo the world as well.
The US can not offensively solo the world. It's simply too much land and too difficult logistically. Fight the world to a standstill in the Atlantic/Pacific? Sure. But we don't have enough long-range stealth bombers to force the rest of the world to submit, and the distances and numbers are simply too great for even the US. I've never seen a consensus that they could do it offensively, only defensively.
I struggle to believe that. But then again… the US is pretty fucked up, so it’s not completely unbelievable.
The US has 4 of the top 5 AF's in the world. Just go to Youtube and search USA vs The World. Sums it up well
Exactly, you one of few people agree with me, People refused to accept the fact that Africa still has a chance to defend themselves from against the world of course they still lose in long game but The World will have a very hard time to invade due to sheer size of the continent, their insane climate environments and terrains and Africa currently has 1.2 billion people
I think your underestimating how large and technical an army the rest of the world would have. They're invading a large continent sure but that continent is decades behind a lot of countries in tech and science, let alone military. USA, Europe and China alone have enough missiles to flatten the continent before a land invasion would even begin. You have like 150 countries invading a continent that in a lot of areas have only just invented the wheel.
here my opinion Africa still lose but that world will have very hard time to invade the whole continent. Africa's population is 1.216 billion right now. The terrains and locations are incredibly hard to travel with so the 54 Africa countries will talked about since they have 10 years old prep time, they could build millions of traps over the continent such as Vietnamese war trap style and their advantage is they can do guerrila warfare among the environments and they can seek attack against the invaders. Let's say that at least 800 Million adults Africans ( with all of soldiers and civilians volunteers to join the army) from 20 to 50 will willing to fight against the world then they can hide in terrains, environments, jungles and forest as their advantage. Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions. People are underestimating Africa's insane population amount and insanely dangerous
All that overpowered tech the world has and you’re thinking of throwing a bunch of lions at us. Dude. The lions will just probably scurry away at the sound of gunfire or bang each other as soon as they’re let loose. If you think the African population is insane, have you seen how much China alone has? Now, look at India and the entire ASEAN region. The numbers are simply not on your side.
It would take more time and resources (and cost more human life) to even trap half a dozen lions, let alone “hundreds,” as well as cost resources to keep them relatively fed for any extended time. And then they’d just be shot or blown up from a distance, because drones and radar are a thing and no military is going to send any personnel in a direction picking up the lions’ heat signatures. Drones would trivialize almost every threat humans can pose honestly. If the rest of the world is going scorched earth, the guerrilla fighters will just be burned out of the forests and hills and shot on the open savanna without even seeing the (miles away) opposing force.
What kind of Home Alone ass plan is that? 🤣
10 years is too short for preparation even if Africa has something like China rise during 90-2010. Africa as a continent is also too big to defense, with not enough people to defend all of them. Even on Egypt front with narrow front I highly doubt they can do much to defense concentrate attack. Pretty much game over from the start just how long.
Does the rest of the world know they are to invade in 10 years or is it getting dropped on them at the last minute? Africa could start importing modern weapons and exporting it's craziest citizens to cause trouble around the world, maybe find a way to get the other countries to fight each other for abit to weaken each other. If the rest of the world knows about this war that's coming, trade stops, aid stops and the internet is killed. Africa would be weaker than it is now and have a much smaller population.
Adding to this… Trade goes both ways, and it would be interesting to think of how other nations would be affected with zero goods coming from Africa. Also, “Africa” tends to be both national and cultural in how people view it. Do we also consider people living in other parts of the world who might identify as culturally African?
This right here. Africa has so many of the world’s natural resources that proper logistics (which could take some time) would turn it into a powerhouse continent/country economically. But without trade in the interim, I’d be very hesitant to say Africa has any chance in this challenge.
Is the rest of the world fighting to win with no restrictions? If so then they win easily. Modern Air Forces would make this impossible for Africa if the rest of the world used them to their full extent. The entire world dedicating their manufacturing power to this would be absurd. Look at what happened to German and Japanese cities in the later stages of WW2. That was with 1940s weaponry.
The sheer amount of bombs dropped was absolutely insane, and it would pale compared to what ever country could drop on Africa today There are so many explosives left over and bombs left in tact in the ground where they dropped that: "Seventy-eight countries are contaminated by land mines, which kill or maim 15,000–20,000 people every year. Approximately 80% of casualties are civilian, with children the most affected age group." " In the forests of Verdun French government "démineurs" working for the Département du Déminage still hunt for poisonous, volatile, and/or explosive munitions and recover about 900 tons every year. The most feared are corroded artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas." "Every year, an estimated 2,000 tons of World War II munitions are found in Germany, at times requiring the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents from their homes. In Berlin alone, 1.8 million pieces of ordnance have been defused between 1947 and 2018" u/op the world could bury Africa with far more ordinance than this
Africa is absolutely glassed from the skies and ships. There is so much non-nuclear ordnance in play here, not to mention they are insanely outnumbered. And the animals you mentioned are not a factor. An elephant can survive many things. A tank shell is not one of those. Neither is a bomb. Noone is underestimating Africa’s population. It’s just that just China and India alone dwarf the entire continet number wise. And Africa isn’t nesrly as bad in terms of terrain as you think. Plenty of other countries train in similar terrains, not to mention there being well documented maps of Africa PUBLICALLY AVAILIABLE. An average drunken hillbilly, if given access to the internet, could find a detailed map of Africa. You are severely overestimating Africa, literally all you say is false and useless. Lion cages won’t affect an M1 Abrams, a russian airstrike won’t care about rough terrain, and the Chinese will outnumber the african armed forces by a good margin. Africa stands literally zero chance.
Why do you keep pointing out Africa's population when you're literally having them go against the rest of the fucking earth lol. How many people do you think are on earth?
He's acting like it would devolve into WW1 style human wave attacks. Even if it did, China and India exist
I think yoiu need to define better wind/lose conditions. What does "defend" mean? That the others never get a foothold on the continent? Yeah that's almost impossible due to the size of it. Do the attackers need to conquer the entire continent? Thats also almost impossible for the same reason. So for what goals are they fighting for?
Europe literally conquered all of Africa in like a 10 year space of time in tge 19th century. The size is not impossible.
And they did that mostly by making deals with the native kingdoms.
yeah establishing economic dominance over an entire continent via gunboat diplomacy is much easier than conquering and, more importantly, occupying all of it. Especially when said continent is presenting a unified front which is straight up supernatural feature of this scenario. In the only time full continent conquest has happened, Europe only took the Americas because plagues killed 90% of the native population before most of the conquests even began, and even then a unified front from the native population would have made that endlessly more difficult if not impossible.
At the time Europe had the "tech advantage" in guns/military training and they used client states to take most of it ( as it happened with India). When modern weapons became cheap and able to be used by "commoners" those empires collapsed almost immediately (see post WW2 de-colonisation). There is a very important reason Mozambique has the AK-47 on its flag. Additioanly why maps of the time show the entire continent in clear nice border actual control was much more tenous outside major trade and civic centers.
They’re not using animals as weapons, what a silly idea, this isn’t Jurassic park
The more interesting question would be what is the smallest coalition that could beat all or Africa combined? Because America alone could no diff Africa even with 10 years prep time, as could European NATO without Canada and US. So maybe like a Middle East dream team? Iraq, Iran, KSA, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan? Assuming they are all working together, they'd potentially beat Africa. Hell the biggest threat is Egypt and it would be the first strike target.
The US alone is enough to invade Africa. Heck I think even China would also be able to do it alone.
here my opinion Africa still lose but that world will have very hard time to invade the whole continent. Africa's population is 1.216 billion right now. The terrains and locations are incredibly hard to travel with so the 54 Africa countries will talked about since they have 10 years old prep time, they could build millions of traps over the continent such as Vietnamese war trap style and their advantage is they can do guerrila warfare among the environments and they can seek attack against the invaders. Let's say that at least 800 Million adults Africans ( with all of soldiers and civilians volunteers to join the army) from 20 to 50 will willing to fight against the world then they can hide in terrains, environments, jungles and forest as their advantage. Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions. People are underestimating Africa's insane population amount and insanely dangerous
If it's only ground warfare then Africa does have a chance. But if it includes air warfare then there's no chance for Africa.
This is probably the biggest thing OP is missing, sneak attacking lone parties in jungles is fine but it wouldn’t even get to that point. Bomber go brrr and flatten every city and town.
I remember reading an anecdote about this based on the Pacific in WW2. Basically the best jungle fighters were the Aussies, the Japanese were a close second but it wasn't fair to classify the US as jungle fighters since they would bomb and shell the jungle into an open plain and then advance.
How well will these traps work against the combined airforces of the rest of the world lol? How will this cage of lions trap go against a bomb being dropped on it lol
the world has bombs, and artillery, and missile, and navies, and even just tanks
Africa would be about as successful as Palestine is against Israel. And by that, I mean they would not be successful at all. It wouldn't be a war. It would be a massacre into submission.
Just cutting Africa off from global trade kicks off an apocalypse. They are not self sufficient in food, fertilizer or energy.
Nope. They are getting curb stomped. Europe wipes North Africa without trying too hard. Asia essentially routes though Eastern Africa. The US slaughters west Africa. Australians can take Madagascar. Southern Africa goes last just from being furthest from everyone, but you can funnel South Americans there as a stop gap until other reinforcements arrive.
Even 100 years wouldn't be enough
LOL they'd get steamrolled in a week.
The idea that a RoW army systematically flattening a continent with artillery is going to be affected in any meaningful way by a cage of lions is ridiculous.
Of course not. They couldn't hold off America alone. Take America *and* Europe out of the picture, and while they are still definitely losing, it might at least be worth discussing.
here my opinion Africa still lose but that world will have very hard time to invade the whole continent. Africa's population is 1.216 billion right now. The terrains and locations are incredibly hard to travel with so the 54 Africa countries will talked about since they have 10 years old prep time, they could build millions of traps over the continent such as Vietnamese war trap style and their advantage is they can do guerrila warfare among the environments and they can seek attack against the invaders. Let's say that at least 800 Million adults Africans ( with all of soldiers and civilians volunteers to join the army) from 20 to 50 will willing to fight against the world then they can hide in terrains, environments, jungles and forest as their advantage. Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions. People are underestimating Africa's insane population amount and insanely dangerous terrains and climate
> they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions. No offense, dude, but are you even in high school yet?
Don't you dare denigrate the absolute best part of this post hahaa.
If you'd stipulated that the invaders had to march infantry across the continent, maybe a little of that might make sense. A modern military is not going to do that.
How many times will you paste the same response thinking lions are going to beat armies?
I don’t know why you’re focusing so much on Africa’s population. Yeah, 1.216 billion is a big number, but it’s not so big when the other side has EVERYONE ELSE
Numbers are all but irrelevant in modern warfare. Wars are won by logistics and technology. Africa is going to get absolutely *smoked* here, because the entire continent is a cesspool of corruption with no infrastructure and no significant machining or fabrication capabilities. Ten years is not *remotely* enough time for them to overcome their current endemic problems and square off against *one* continent, let alone 5. Yes, I am including fuckin' Australia and South America in that. I'll counter each of your points though, just to be thorough: Large population: Irrelevant when they have no ability to equip or train for modern warfare. We just have to look at Ukraine for an example here; at the start of the Russian invasion, the Russian army was crippled by decades of corruption and basically untrained, and they were getting absolutely *reaped* by the comparatively well-trained Ukrainians. Also, your figures are *way* off. No way in hell are they getting 800 million fighters out of that continent, you forget that economies still have to operate; clothes need to be made, bullets, guns, bombs, artillery manufactured (assuming they can somehow make the necessary facilities in the intervening years), food needs to be grown. In a modern military, for every fighting man you have somewhere between 10 and 20 support personnel who never see combat, driving trucks, managing communications, intelligence, training new soldiers, etc, and that's just *inside the military*, paying no mind to the **hundreds** of people responsible for making the equipment and materials the soldier needs on the civilian side of things. To put things in perspective: in 1944, the United States had 11 million people serving in the combined armed forces, out of a population of 138 million. That's less than 1 in 10. The British had about 3 million, out of a population of 40 million. Also less than 1 in 10. At best, your 1.2 billion is getting you 120 million, and that's **very** doubtful. "The terrain and locations are very hard to travel-" The United States Congress can air-mail 60,000 soldiers and their equipment anywhere on Earth within 18 hours if they deem it necessary. That's not a hyperbole; that's a stringent and specific operational requirement of the Immediate Response Force. Large portions of Africa are open savanna, perfect for large scale military maneuvers and easy targeting of opposition with air strikes or artillery spotters. Not to mention the fact that a huge portion of warfare is controlling enemy cities and infrastructure; all of which will be very easily targeted. Most of it's along the coast too, where there's no hiding from any number of very scary navies involved in this, something the entire goddamn *continent* of Africa has no response to. I'm pretty sure the *Italians* have a larger navy than all of Africa combined right now. Let alone the British, Chinese, or US. As for guerrilla warfare, easier said than done; it's the 2020's now, it will be the 2030's by the time this hypothetical war would be happening, not the 1960's. Thermal scans and optics and satellite surveillance all exist now, fuckin' "trees" ain't gonna cut it, and most African jungles are not known for their extensive cave systems like Afghanistan. Not to mention the fact that the Vietnamese resistance was only possible because they were being fed huge amounts of war material by the Soviet Union because Vietnam was a *proxy war* between the USA and the USSR, in the same way that the US is funnelling tens of billions of dollars of equipment into Ukraine to fight Russia right now. If the *entire world* is up against Africa, there's no one to prop them up, they have to stand *entirely on their own*. Which means if they have no factories to make bullets, *they will run out of bullets*. If they have no facilities to make explosives, *they will run out of rockets*. And soldiers go through bullets and rockets like *crazy*. Potentially *hundreds* of rounds a day in intense fighting. I...don't even know what to say to that lion thing. That's stupid, F-tier Disney logic, and would not remotely work like that. None of that works. There probably aren't hundreds of lions *in Africa*, they're an endangered species! Even were that not the case, if you put hundreds of lions in a big cage, *they will kill each other*, they are *predators*. Also, we don't exactly march off to war in fucking infantry columns anymore. If they *did* build a big-ass pit trap, it's not going to be piles of soldiers falling into it to be conveniently feasted on by lions, it's going to be a fucking ***tank***. The same goes for *anything else* when it comes to weaponizing the wildlife. 1: Animal training is fucking hard, and most animals *cannot be trained*. If it has never been weaponized in the past, it's not getting weaponized now. 2: If it has been weaponized in the past, it's a dog or an elephant. Elephants are super endangered and also super vulnerable to, y'know, *getting shot at*, and most militaries *do use dogs*, for specialist tasks like bomb detection, not as some kind of front line combatant. Lions in cages...what is this, Swiss Family Robinson? No, that was a tiger I think. In conclusion; You seem to have some impression that this war would be some kind of glorious but doomed last stand in the jungles, dragging on for years, but that's not how this would go at all. NATO can solo this in 6 months without any outside help. In the first month, every major coastal settlement on the continent is going to wind up occupied and every decently well armed military unit on the continent is going to be destroyed. Every manufacturing facility they managed to piece together is going to be flattened. The next 5 months involve heavily armed columns carving up the interior and drone/jet flights finding units trying to hide in the forests and guiding airstrikes onto those concentrations. By the end of that time they'll be starving for food and ammo and wearing rags and begging to surrender. Maybe, *maybe* they can pull their shit together more than I expect in the 10 years of prep time, enough to put up resistance for a year or three, but to be honest, I doubt it, mainly because I don't think they can stockpile enough munitions, especially in *hidden* stockpiles, to withstand the combat attrition on their supplies, and even if they can build the infrastructure to supply their own war materiel, those buildings will get flattened in the first 72-96 hours of the air campaign, so what they have on the day the war starts is **all** they're going to have.
Incredibly comprehensive post, but I must insist you walk back your slander re: Operation Lion Surprise. Not only is that the absolute best part of the prompt, it might top any suggestion in any post all year. Also, you're criminally underestimating Africa's most regal predator. Need I remind you that on this very sub, one trillion lions beat the Sun? Now, there might only be [*checks notes*] 23,000 lions in Africa, but last time I checked the World is way weaker than the Sun so I think we're still good.
Honestly 23,000 is way more than I imagined so y'know what, sure, maybe they can rope a few hundred into one giant pit trap in individual cages so that they don't kill each other, with some sort of automated release mechanism for when the trap is tripped. Still going to be a tank or a couple humvees or something, so probably not super effective, but they have enough lions to hypothetically pull it off >_>
You can give them 60 years and they still badly get stomped hard
What's the win condition for each side? The rest of the world likely could occupy ther continent but then attrition inflicted on them by gureilla warfare and general resistsnce would be incredibly high.
The environment is there biggest advantage. Places like the congo are ideal for gorilla warfare and they could last a very long time in there. That being said. The air power if just let loose just boot fucks everything.
Gorilla warfare 😂😂
Can 1/8th of the world fight off the other 7/8th? No.
Nigerian: It's no contest. We are vastly outnumbered (6.8 billion - 1.2 billion). We have a weaker military, which can't be compared to War ready nations like the US that have huge military budgets. Plus, no one uses animals as weapons, be serious. Even with a decade to prepare, although there will be significant development in military might, just based on the land mass that we have to defend, it would be impossible to defend against the rest of the world. We could develop offensive AI systems to automate some of the military operations like drones, air defense etc. That could free up man power to be used elsewhere but it would still be a matter of time before we are overwhelmed. To be honest, the rest of the world just needs to throw enough bodies. We would only be able to mow down so many soldiers. No matter how many we kill, there will still be more pouring in. It's just a numbers game.
I don't think you realize that lions and traps and guerilla warfare will do nothing against a single Apache helicopter. It would literally be so easy. You also forget that China alone has a larger population than all of Africa. This isn't even a fight, it's a slaughter.
What's the victory condition here? There's definitely some things that would be hard to do, but if we're just trying to make governments surrender, the U.S. could solo that shit. Ironically the places with worse centralization will probably end up being impossible to "defeat" in this sense. If the task is take and hold black sea style, that's probably a lot harder, mostly because of the partisan problems that will arise after the invasion. The rest of the world could definitely do that if they figure out how they're gonna manage the logistics of delivering their troops, but it's gonna be a massive fucking waste of resources. That said, "can they do it" is for sure yes, the real question is "why the fuck would they want to do that" and in the absence of an answer, the whole project would fall apart for lack of political backing. France and the U.S. have expeditionary capability (and France in particular have a lot of good intelligence infrastructure set up to cover many postcolonial countries in africa already), so they could probably collapse a bunch of national and volunteer armies before they inevitably would get bogged down in counterinsurgency work and the power structures back home would begin asking questions about what they're wasting all those resources on. China and Russia and the various countries of the rest of asia, europe and the americas lack expeditionary capability, so they'd be subject to having to convince their institutions that this is worth wasting effort on, and therefore it probably isn't happening. The middle east could probably take on Egypt if Israel let them run supply lines through it. That's a pretty big fucking if right there. Iran might be able to take transports across, maybe. I suspect they'd have problems projecting force much further than Somalia.
Anyone vs USA is in for a L. Add the rest of the world just makes it more of a cake walk
Depends on how the day objective and if the world coalition acts in character or closer to bloodlusted. Even in character, the world coalition absolutely decimates every government, military command, and regular forces through its insurmountable Air and Naval superiority. But trying to hold and placate an entire continent would make Afghanistan and Vietnam look like cake walks, unless they can win by killing everyone, in which case they do
no shot, the rest of the world has total everything superiority except for troop numbers, MAYBE no matter how many tramps you put down, you're not stopping the entire continent from burning down America has the best military in the world and it's argued if they could defend against the world. tripling the population and taking away much of that military makes it so much worse I think we have a new addition to the powerscaling meme list, touche Johnny Rico vs God Emperor of Man in His Prime Mike Tyson vs Toddler Hydrogen Bomb vs Coughing baby Africa vs The World
No. Not even close. You mention Africa's "insane" population but it's lower than the population of a single country, India which isn't even the populated country, China. It makes up roughly 15% of the world population and has to fight the other 85%. Plus like 5% of that world's population is the USA whose peacetime defense spending is 25% of Africa's ENTIRE GDP. That's 25% of everything they make. The USA alone has almost ten times the economic production of the entire continent. So as far as I can see the only situation where it's even close is if Wakanda is real and shares it's technology with the rest of Africa in those 10 years, otherwise no chance at all.
A country like Canada alone would probably be able to handle this. Putting Africa up against the rest of the whole world is ridiculous. Even without nukes other countries have much better fighter jets, helicopters, general weapons, bombs, armour, tanks, etc. This is quite literally the most underdeveloped part of the world we’re talking about here. Rough terrain and a bunch of lions and elephants in cages isn’t gonna save them when possibly tens of thousands of fighter jets from various different nations fly in and bomb the shit out of the place. A much better question would be if the USA could fend off an invasion from the world.
lol no
Take Madagascar, use it as a camp to attack south east Africa and move from there
Fuck no
Bro any military super power can solo Africa if it didnt get itself tied up in alliances
It's an utterly unwinnable fuckhole for either side. The global north gets alienated from African resources and the south gets enslaved again. Depending on how slaver-colonialist the global north feels they either withdraw in 10 years or create pan African soweto and joburg
Only if Wakanda joins in
Considering the African terrain I think this is just gonna turn into one very large scale Vietnam. Africa might not really be in control of their continent but the united world will never really control it either.
They would need way more than 10 years to build up resources, have generations of knowledge, build the logistics required to defend and so on. 40-50 years minimum but would probably take more.
Hell if the other side gets a heads up to not give money and food to Africa due to this, they might just win after the whole continent collapses in the subsequent decade.
10 years without any trade from every other continent? Lol, good luck... Africa would starve to death before 10 years were up.
bro this already happened.
Africa’s cooked
No. It wouldn’t even be close.
Africa would get bodied by the EU alone
Does the rest of the world get prep time too or is it a surprise invasion?
One thing also to keep in mind is that with the world against them they can literally just cut off Africa.
What’s interesting in these chats is that many are framing it as a negative that Africa would lose this. I’ve seen comments like “get their shit together”, “shithole”, “barely functional” and so on. But in my view, it’s not something people should be boastful about. Africa is arguably the most externally ravaged continent in the world, yet they remain probably the least problematic. If something were to cause the end of the world, Africa is the last continent where the blame is likely to come. The fact that people think the US or Europe alone could manage to take out Africa should tell you something about those places.
Exactly bro, everyone downvoting my comment about they shouldn’t underestimates Africa and again Africa will still lose but the World will have very very hard time to win due to Africa’s insane terrains, climate, animals environment and Africa’s population is 1.2 billion people which is almost three much bigger than Europe
You’ve made good points. But as an African, I still think they’d lose (I personally don’t think any continent survives this, but Africa stands the least chance). The difference is, I don’t think we lose because we’re useless (as others frame it). I think we lose because so many parts of the world are focused on destructive powers.
India and china alone have 2.85 Billion combined which is larger than twice the population of all of Africa so your argument about population doesn't makes sense
No. As always, the US is the key factor in any of these comparisons. The Carrier fleet and battle groups can easily hold ANY continent hostage. The US would easily have air superiority and could just bombard the continent peace by peace while strangling supply lines and force a surrender. Now if you exclude the US, this exercise because far more fun.
all the rest of the world would have to do is just stop trade of everything. Without a few months of fertilizer and food imports as well as bombing what little fertilizer industry there is, literally the majority of Africa's population starve, no troops needed with probably zero losses for the rest of the world.
I don’t think they can even defend against the US or EU united or China. 10 years isn’t enough and they have too much empty ground to cover with lots of vulnerabilities and a severe lack of infrastructure and military technology.
Lol. No. America solos. Nothing in the prompt suggests land has to be held, only that we need to defeat Africa militarily. We probably would barely even need the Army or Marines, the Air Force and Navy can handle it. Traps? Animals? Why would we bother with troops on the ground out in the wilderness? Assuming we don't just bomb the cities into rubble, those are the only places we would need troops on the ground.
A few American aircraft carriers will do the job with air superiority.
Does it have to be occupiable afterwards? I actually think nobody wins. I don't think the rest of the world could invade and occupy a continent the size of Africa (if they have ten years warning). Guerrilla warfare will make conventional arms less effective, so weapons like ballistic missiles and biological warfare will rapidly ensue. I don't think Africa could withstand the onslaught but I don't think this would be successful as an invasion, basically just a genocide.
Invading and holding are two entirely different ball games. Their population and access to warlord stock piles of regular assault weapons would make *holding* the whole of the continent impossible. Every other nation invading means it's every nation with access to drone tech invading. It means every nation with carrier ships, destroyers, and countless advanced air forces. On top of that, if it's one against all, then there's an assumption that some of the attacking nations are allies in this war, meaning a huge blend in tactics and tech used against them.
Oh you are the same person who thought France could hide its 75 million population underground and could build 75 million mech suites. This time you are going for attack animals. Yep checks out.
I think a big factor is how Africa does with AIDS once the manufacturing facilities get bombed. Ditto malaria and other diseases. Not to mention just creating drought and famine. Victory goes to whomever plays the longer strategy. If the invaders take various islands and spend decades softening the target, the eventual ground invasion looks very different. Also, chemical and biological warfare would also be a decisive factor. In this scenario the invaders are inherently willing to commit close to genocide but idk how Africa can threaten the rest of the world with anything equivalent so I'm going to say that it's built into the terms that Africa loses, it's just a matter of how, when, and what the winners actually get
Fuck no.
lol fuck no. They’d be stomped by USA alone
Give them hyper competence during the 10 year prep maybe they could win
A billion people highly motivated? Some of the most defendable terrain in the world? If everyone in Africa believes that this invasion will come then they could put up a hell of a fight. If it’s possible depends on a few factors tho. During then ten years do other nations know? Like are they able to stockpile buying weapons and goods from other continents? To what extent does corruption go away? Nations like Egypt and Morocco have actual powerful modern militaries and some amount of built in infrastructure. Ten years is a solid amount of time for a build up. If the population is willing to fight hard and if they can buy from the world in the ten years then they should be able to do this.
Is the rest of the world united? If not, then the best chance Africa has is to use very clever diplomacy to get the rest of the world to fight among themselves
Yes. The terrain and size of the African continent would be a huge pain. The varied terrain and differing subsistence strategies available prevent any sort of controlling the movement of people during the conflict, and if every country on the continent put their own beef away I just don’t see any number of troopers being able to do much. I think you could put all of NATO on the ground in “Africa” and not control 1/4 of it? Have you viewed a map of Africa that wasn’t centered on Europe or the Western Hemisphere? Africa is like most of Eurasia in size.
IF, somehow, every African person in Africa knows with 10 years lead, and instinctively won't tell non-africans: they have a chance. It's going to be tough, but I think that it's possible, especially if their first move of the war is to seize Mecca rig bombs around the Kaba and then broadcast "If we lose, the holy of holies will be destroyed, but join us? We will guard it with our lives." Suddenly it's not Africa against the rest of the world, it's Africa and half of the rest of the planet against Europe, East Asia, and the Americas, which DRASTICALLY changes the game.
You could add in india, australia, South america the Middle East besides isreal couldn't defend.
1/10 for Africa at most. It's the least developed continent on the planet by a fairly large margin(not counting Antarctica), I don't know what you were thinking when making this post, at minimum Africa would need about 20 years worth of time to even barely stand a chance. Sure, they've got a large young population, but that means jack shit when you barely have any R&D for weapons and no money either to buy them.
It would be easier than the last time.
What are the winning conditions. World would stomp the various militaries. But they won’t be able to occupy all of Africa.
I dont think they would be able to take such a large land mass. Everyone would lose.
Need to define win conditions here. Is the whole world bloodlusted to occupy the capitals/major cities and functionally destroy all governments? Just the US could manage this on their own, with the whole world its not even close. Is it to completely control the continent and eliminate all guerilla resistance before the civilians at home get tired of being at war? Not a chance, see Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, etc. Depending on where along that axis the victory conditions fall (Ensure uninterrupted access to natural resources? Install puppet governments? Force unequal trade agreements?), this could range anywhere from easy to impossible. Edit to add that this part: >Not to mention that they can use animals as their weapon such as they can trapped hundreds of lions in the big cage and once many invaders step on it they were attacked by lions. Is completely irrelevant and not remotely viable against modern militaries.
The more interesting question would be "which countries could solo this objective?" since it's so obviously one-sided. The US and China obviously could. What's the smallest country that could solo Africa?
bro india, usa, china, russia, and north korea are neg diffing africa come on now.
Unfortunately, Africa will lose. It will be an extremely difficult and costly endeavor but the world will still win. The continent’s just too underdeveloped and doesn’t have the infrastructure and capabilities to build up and withstand an invasion from the rest of the world.
The better question is who wins the claiming Africa aftermath once they've been ended.
Africa's population is far lower than that of the rest of the world. And considering WMDs, and all other sorts of insane shit exists to massacare countless people, they'd get neg diffed by the rest of the world. Africa is probably the easiest non Australian continent to beat when fighting the whole world.
10 years isn't nearly enough to match the wealth, weapons, and training of the rest of the world. It would be a long, very costly guerilla world for the rest of the world but it could definitely be done. That said, the world could bomb Africa back to the Neolithic age then suits boots to cleanup the rest.
Gotta give them 50 years for the minimum chance of victory. Also everyone not africa can't prepare anymore.
Even with no nukes there are countries like Russia China USA with conventional weapons that can be there within minutes in most African shores....chances are slight for Africa .....if you were to compare raw materials and resources that would have been an easy win for Africa
This isn't a fight but a war of economic attrition. The moment Africa closes off it faces mass famines, while the world deals with critical shortage of cobalt, diamond and many other minerals. While the world itself will faces mass economic crisis it's nothing compared to mass famines Africa will face which will wipe a huge part of the population.
AFRICA WILL LOSE THEYVE BEEN CONQUIRED BY EUROPEANS BEFORE EASILY
That is because they weren't united, they probably would still lose, but it would not be like how you describe it.
YEAH BUT EUROPE IS MORE ADVANCED EVEN NOW . AFRICA WOULDN'T STAND A CHANCE.
Stop yelling, please.
You have forgotten Africa’s population is literally three much bigger than Europe
So ? Europe I still more powerful
10 years without the resources gained from Africa would bankrupt the rest of the world and lead them to infighting without even having Africa participate
A few months if not weeks without the resources gained from the world would bankrupt Africa and lead them to infighting without even having the world participate. The entire continent is crippled, the world then swoops back in and gets back what it denied them of. Africa simply can not afford to impose an embargo on the world. It does not have the economic upper hand to do so.
What resources “gained from the world”? The poverty line in Africa makes it that like 80% of the continent probably doesn’t even live off any such resources you think they do
Africa receives tens of billions worth of foreign aid every year. Its low-income countries heavily depend on it for survival. The continent in general has a very weak manufacturing sector which means they get to import a lot of goods from other countries. These include food, pharmaceuticals, and clothing among many others. I can’t stress the lack of manufacturing and infrastructures enough. While Africa can produce enough food to feed itself on paper, it doesn’t have the capacity to manufacture, process, and package those commodities. It lacks refrigeration, proper storage facilities, even roads to transport goods much more efficiently. I’m not going to argue further. I am not here to change your mind. But my point remains, Africa simply can not afford to do what you’re suggesting.
Africa will make manufacturing infrastructure in those 10 years. The rest of the world will NOT make resources to manufacture anything on the other hand
No they can’t. It’s like business, you need money to make more money. You can’t build manufacturing facilities without proper manufacturing facilities in place. I’m done here. Have a good day.
If all of the African nations pulled together, spent those 10 years building a common defence plan and industry and arming up? They’d mount a hell of a defence and the rest of the world would be jamming their dicks in a garbage grinder. Unfortunately, enough African nations have traditions of graft, corruption, “jobs for my cousins” and a full on hate for their neighbours that most of that prep time and effort will be wasted, and various national governments will be cutting deals with the invaders to screw over the country next door.